Life

Bishop Mercurius was born Igor Vladimirovich Ivanov on January 21, 1964 in Porkhov, Pskov Oblast. After finishing high school he worked for a year as a nurse before continuing his studies in St. Petersburg, where he graduated with a pediatrician degree in 1989. In 1988, meanwhile, the future bishop was tonsured a monk with the name Mercurius and in January 1989 was ordained a deacon. In August 1989, Hierodeacon Mercurius was ordained to the priesthood and appointed a full-time priest at the Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Kaliningrad (formerly Konigsberg), Russia.

Hieromonk Mercurius served in Kaliningrad for several years, being elevated to the rank of igumen (abbot) in 1992 and eventually being appointed rector of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior under construction in the city. In January 2000, Igumen Mercurius was elevated to the rank of archimandrite and in February he was consecrated to the episcopacy as Bishop of Zaraisk and auxiliary to the patriarch responsible for the patriarchal Russian Orthodox parishes in the United States.

Bishop Mercurius remained administrator of the patriarchal parishes in the USA and representative of the Moscow Patriarchate to the Orthodox Church in America until 2009, when the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church appointed him chairman of the Synodal Department of Religious Education and Catechesis and transferred him from New York to Moscow.

Since his return to Moscow Bishop Mercurius has been appointed superior of the stavropeghial Vysoko-Petrovskiy Monastery in Moscow and overseer of the northern deanery of the patriarchial Diocese of Moscow in addition to his ongoing duties as head of the Department of Religious Education.